Chap. ?.] SOCIAL AND POLITICAL HISTOKY. 93 



Market Place for the other end is discxualified as a voter, for two j-ears 

 in some cases. Manj- police cases and the like are looked over on 

 accouut of the difficulty and expense caused by this " old time " state 

 of things. Hothersall, too, is in the same extraordinary position as 

 Thoruley. It is joined to Longridge (Alston) for PaUiamentary 

 purposes, is in Ribchester Parish, and in ths Hundred of Blackburn. 

 In l3oth these cases the boundary lines, as in the case of Alston and 

 Dilworth, are merely nominal. 



Attempts have been made from time to time to remedy this division, 

 but hitherto without results. The Local Board suggested, with but 

 little enthusiasm, a Petty Sessional division being formed at 

 Longridge ; while the Liberal Association of Longridge prepared 

 evidence and petitioned the Boundary Commissioners, in 1884, to throw 

 Dilworth along with Alston into the Amounderness Hundred and 

 Blackpool Division, but the Commissioners replied non imssumiis — 

 pleaded they had no powers. 



Politically speaking, Longridge was born in 1866. It then had 

 73 voters on the register. The Alston voters voted at Alston; but the 

 Dilworth voters Iiad to go to poll at Ribchester. As if by magic the 

 people of Longridge were tiwakened from this state of political torpor 

 and their passions roused to fever heat by what the vast majority 

 deemed Mr. Gladstone's blasphemous proposals to disestablish and 

 disendow the Irish Church. The writer well remembers hearing over 

 and over again the story of what Longridge did during that election 

 (1868). Tobeiguorant of the fact that two-thirds of Longridge people at 

 that day were Church-j)eople first and politicians afterwards is to have 

 failed to grasp the keystone of the character of Longridge people. 

 They were filled with an intense (if somewhat blind) feeling of 

 attachment to the Church as a j)olitical (or State) institution. The 

 writer can understand (from his own experience as a Churchman), if he 

 cannot sympathise now with, such a feeling. In this state of things 

 then, to be a Liberal wivS bad, but to be a Churchman and also a 

 Liberal was something that could not be understood. Manj' minds 

 ■were not broad enough to conceive such a condition as this, and so 

 against the few and solitary Liberal Churchmen, notably Mr. D. Irvin, 



